


But Normal Was Always Overrated

by Jen425



Series: And The Virus Of Our Word Is Thus Survived [6]
Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, Tokusatsu
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kiriya-Centric, Kujou Kiriya Needs A Hug, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23585845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: He crumples the picture in his hand and only later realizes that it’s gotten his blood on it.—•—“Wow,” Parado says. “Is that Lazer dressed normally?”
Relationships: Aihara Jungo/Kujou Kiriya, Houjou Emu/Kujou Kiriya/Poppy Pipopapo
Series: And The Virus Of Our Word Is Thus Survived [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659322
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	But Normal Was Always Overrated

**Author's Note:**

> Wow Jacketfic ended up with a lot less than I thought?
> 
> Also Kiriya is hard to hurt. My voice for him is made up of 90% snark.
> 
> ALSO: 200th work here on Ao3!!! Eyyy!!!
> 
> This takes place in my own personal rough post-Ex-Aid timeline btw.

_ Kiriya can’t bring himself to return home to his now forever-empty apartment, after… _

_ After… _

_ All he manages is a slow trudge to his office after racing in, on his day off. Thinking that at least Jungo would come home eventually, but… but… _

_ (“You’re lying!”) _

_ (“Doctor Kujo, it’s…”) _

_ He sits at his desk and doesn’t even try to continue processing the guilt that almost wants to send him after Jungo… staring at the picture sitting on his desk. _

_ (“You look good in red,” Jungo had commented. “Why do you always only dress like this outside of work?” _

_ Kiriya had just laughed, pulling his more straight laced boyfriend into a kiss. _

_ “Wouldn’t it look unprofessional?” He’d teased. Jungo had only smiled. _

_ “No,” he said. “It’d look like you.”) _

_ He picks it up, slowly. _

_ (His fault…) _

_ And punches the image through the glass, pulling it out. They were smiling. They were happy. Jungo was… _

_ He was there. _

_ (“I mean, you were the one to buy me the jacket,” he pointed out.) _

_ He crumples the picture in his hand and only later realizes that it’s gotten his blood on it. _

  
  
  


**Six years later**

Kiriya has to admit, his list of moving woes is a strange one. Firstly, he’s legally dead, so that had to be fixed up, and why are there legal documents for “resolvement of temporary deaths caused by conflicts between ‘superheroes’ and those they fight”, anyways?

…Actually.

Stupid question.

It’s obviously fairly common just in Kiriya’s own experience, and how many Riders from other… groupings has he met? The ones from the Gorider incident that he still tells Emu he doesn’t remember, for instance. They all could have come back if “God” wasn’t so… well, so him.

Secondly, one of his datemate’s body sharer lives there and is very protective of both. But… well, Parado likes him well enough, by now.

Thirdly… he hasn’t actually needed to go through the boxes his stuff had been thrown into while he was “dead” until now. Luckily, the others are helping, with all of Emu and Parado’s stuff now thoroughly mixed and disorganizedly included with his.

It’s Parado who finds it, though.

“Wow,” he says. “Is that Lazer dressed  _ normally _ ?”

Kiriya throws a pillow at the Bugster.

“You’re one to talk,” he says. Parado smirks.

“I’m a Bugster,” he says, “A six year old designed me…” then he actually holds up the crumpled picture. “Who’s this, though?”

Kiriya thinks he can pinpoint both the exact moment he freezes and the exact moment Emu and Poppy do the same.

It was the day he’d gotten his license. Him and Jungo had been so excited that they’d gone out to eat, and Kiriya had been wearing his work clothes for the first half of it, when they asked for s picture because wasn’t it nice to finally earn that white lab coat?

Back then he had cared just slightly for the rules. He’d been wearing a plain shirt and unripped jeans, for work. Jungo had often joked how much he disliked it, but… well, the guy wore a suit to work…

No. No going there.

“Jungo,” he says. “It’s…”

It’s the photo he’d had on his desk, clenched in his bloody fist when his grief was raw and ugly and he couldn’t bring himself to go home.

“Oh,” Parado says. “I’m… sorry, Lazer—”

Kiriya snatches the photo from his hand before more can be said.

“It’s really nothing, Bug Boy,” he says.

(He hates that Poppy and Emu both know him well enough to frown even more at the back of his head at his utterly false laugh.)

  
  
  


Having done it twice, dying should really scare Kiriya more than it does. Or maybe that’s why it scares him less, a fact of both his profession and his life, the way it is.

That doesn’t stop the nightmares from reminding him that being ripped apart atom by atom actually hurts. A lot. Unbelievably. Even when he was just coding, that second time.

What’s odd is that, specifically the first time, he remembers it took a few seconds after his transformation failed before he realized that it hurt. Too much to really even cause his body to want to scream. It was different than the Game Disease victims he’s seen. Maybe in its sudden sudden inevitability.

In his memories, he can remember rainwater trickling through his cracks as he began to fade away. It hurt. It hurt to try to stand, hurt to smile enough to hopefully give Emu hope because no matter what he’d trusted that Emu could do it, somehow.

But even before that his first thought had been…

Jungo…

But, when it all comes down to it… He… for Emu, for this time, no adding to the pain. Smile. Trust him…

  
  
  


Awakening without a fully gasp, Kiriya remembers that these nightmares are the quiet kind. And wonders at the terrible luck of needing to sleep on this day. (And it’s been a year and a half and yet it’s still so  _ fucking _ weird to remember that he hasn’t been human in closer to two.) At least he didn’t wake Emu, who’s curled into a small ball on his side, though he’ll inevitably be taking up half the bed by morning.

“Kiriya?”

Poppy, however, is already awake. Judging from her proximity, she’d likely been on his other side until he woke up (they’ve gotten to the point where they always know who needs to be in the middle, and Kiriya knows better than to fight it). Kiriya doesn’t even try to look away from her worried face, all scrunched up and forced-cute with her pink Poppy hair. He sighs.

“Sorry for waking you,” he says. She shakes her head.

“I wasn’t really tired,” she says. “Just wanted to curl up with you and Emu and forget the amount of work moving is.”

“Oh,” Kiriya says, though he’d already figured that, letting his face shift into a lazy smirk. “Sorry then, Princess, for disrupting you from your distraction.”

“Kiriya…”

How he ended up dating the people with some of the most deadly puppy dog eyes on this planet is beyond him, because he caves after about five seconds.

“Once the Ace wakes up,” he says. “I promise.”

  
  
  


He doesn’t go back to sleep, but sleep is a weird thing as a Bugster, anyways. It’s more like plugging into a charging station when your battery runs low, perhaps. Or retreating from a fight before your hp hits zero.

Instead he goes to the desk and sits with Asuna as they do paperwork and don’t talk. Because she obviously knows how far it is to push this issue that he’s successfully managed to avoid since he first told them and then let Emu misunderstand.

Though he has to admit that it’s easier to research when you don’t have to steal the information, even if it comes with extra paperwork on top of his day job’s.

Emu gets up at six something naturally, that morning, as though he has an inner alert for Kiriya’s nervousness and awkwardness. He’s  _ never _ really talked about this, if he’s honest, had shrugged off any probes from Nisshi and not really explained to Emu and Poppy and the others, back when.

It’s been years but he still can’t help but blame himself, to boot.

They make breakfast, first, and the worst part of this is the foreboding which keeps it all running over and over again in his head. Panting heavily in some hallway because Jingo was taller and terrified and he hadn’t been able to keep up. Thinking he’d come back soon. Getting the call that he was…

That he was dead.

  
  
  


“I didn’t really lie about Jingo,” is the way Kiriya begins. “I know, he did die in an accident, but it was really…”

_ My fault. _

“I’d gotten my hands on the Ministry’s report on Game Disease a few months after Zero Day, and I saw the… the pixels,” Kiriya explains. “and I told him. He… he didn’t take it well.”

“Kiriya…” Emu says, voice so soft and caring Kiriya could drown in it, but then he wouldn’t finish.

“He panicked,” Kiriya says, instead. “His parents had both died of illness, and he didn’t want to die slowly like that, so he…”

He jumped in front of a car, came out of nowhere during a red light. He…

“I told him,” Kiriya repeats. “And I made the wrong choice.”

He thinks that’s when he starts crying, but maybe it’s just when he noticed the tears.

And, for the first time in more than five years, he thinks about it and let’s himself cry.

But, this time, he isn’t alone.

And that’s… that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita and @dancingqueen-mai


End file.
